How do you move a 764 ton trawler?

How do you go about moving a 764 ton former trawler which has served as a museum since 1999? This is the question we at Hull Museums asked ourselves as we prepared Hull’s Arctic Corsair for the ship’s first trip in 20 years.

As you may have heard, the vessel is moving from a berth on the River Hull next year for the first time since opening as a museum. This will enable restoration work to be carried out as part of the HLF-funded Hull, Yorkshire’s Maritime City project. The ship is expected to reopen to the public in two to three years as the centrepiece of a new maritime history visitor attraction at the former North End Shipyard.

The most important parts of the Corsair museum are arguably the ship and the expertise and memories of our volunteer tour guides. Many of the guides have connections to Hull’s fishing community, and several sailed on board the Corsair. Adding to this is an onboard collection including the everyday objects which aided both ship and crew in tackling lengthy distant water fishing trips. Everything on the Corsair needed cataloguing and removing in order to keep it safe whilst the ship is away.

Volunteers packing objects for storage.

We advertised the job of cataloguing this varied and unique collection to volunteers, and received enthusiastic responses from both our existing volunteers and those from Absolutely Cultured. Working in small teams for four hour shifts on Tuesdays and Fridays, the process took around three months.

The Corsair’s collection had last been catalogued in 2007. Part of the task facing our volunteers involved checking whether the items catalogued then were still on board the ship. In some cases this was easy, whilst various similar-looking nets and spanners in the forepeak proved quite difficult to locate! Other items which had been brought on board since 2007 were also catalogued. Overall, roughly 1200 objects have been documented, photographed, and packed ready for removal.

Fishroom props being removed for storage. 

The 'white stained pillow' catalogued as AC1392.

AC1074 Bianca Italian peeled plum tomatoes